Free Healthcare IT Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Get all the latest Health IT updates from Neil Versel for FREE!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information.
We respect our readers' privacy.

You heard it here first, only because I happen to be up way too late on a Friday evening, working on a huge project due in just over two weeks: Susan Dentzer, chief health correspondent for the “NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” is the new editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, effective May 1.

You heard it here first because the folks at Project HOPE decided to send out the press release well after hours, just as it did a couple of weeks ago when the previous editor, Jamie Robinson, decided to leave after just a few months on the job.

Perhaps I should have taken the hint when Dentzer emceed the Health Affairs 25th anniversary summit last November. Or not. The only other time I had met her was at the 2007 AHIP Institute, when I mistook her for AHIP boss Karen Ignani. I do know that she knows the business, and she was gracious enough to take my call last year and chat for a few minutes, even after telling me that “NewsHour” didn’t have a freelance budget.

According to Health Affairs:

“Dentzer also serves on the Kaiser Commission on the Future of Medicaid and the Uninsured, and she is a member of the national advisory committee for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research. From 1993 to 2004, Dentzer was a member of the board of trustees for her alma mater, Dartmouth College, and she chaired the board from 2001 through 2004. As a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1986 and 1987, Dentzer studied political economy, health economics, and business at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, and the Harvard School of Public Health.”

That’s quite a CV.

This might be my last post for a while, since my Doctor’s Digest tome, all 30,000 words of it, is due April 14. I may or may not hit the World Health Care Congress in Washington April 21-23, before going on a much-needed vacation on April 26, and I may or may not blog again before then.

Lots of people have found this site while searching for information on Google‘s presence at the recent HIMSS conference. I wrote up a couple of short pieces about Eric Schmidt’s keynote address and subsequent press conference, but time is of the essence for me over the next month and a half. I therefore present the full video of Schmidt’s address, which includes some Q&A. Feel free to draw your own conclusions. Or just go to the original YouTube page for some bizarre comments.

For me, the highlight of HIMSS ’07 was my podcast interview with Jonathan Bush of athenahealth. It was so much fun, he agreed to sit down with me again at this year’s HIMSS conference. I’m hoping this can become a regular occurrence. We get full of ourselves at several points and get way off topic at times, but it was taped on the last morning of HIMSS and everyone’s a little loopy by then. Even the technical glitch—my microphone being off for a few seconds—didn’t affect the outcome, other than to provide a good laugh or three.

0:35 The cult of Mr. HIStalk1:25 Is Cerner pulling out of HIMSS?2:25 Disruptive technologies2:50 Why software is dead4:25 Why other companies still sell software6:30 The “dead zone” around the Orange County Convention Center8:15 Chief athenista Todd Park and future plans for the company10:15 athena’s lingo12:10 Success of eClinicalWorks based on selling software14:10 Google Health, the next Segway?16:05 Google Health vs. Microsoft HealthVault and other PHRs18:00 Why existing PHRs are not much better than Microsoft Word19:00 How athenahealth could help with PHRs20:40 PHRs need something to do21:15 Could Google give doctors leverage with health plans?23:55 Trust issues24:45 Risk vs. reward for sharing health information26:05 athena’s API for linking to PHRs27:25 Why e-commerce works in other industries28:35 What doctors need29:25 Carrot vs. stick: cash, options or control31:10 Opportunity for doctors to take back disease management from payers33:00 How to reach physician practices33:40 Targeting smaller practices34:55 Opportunities with enterprise customers36:15 Partnership with Eclipsys and the seeds of RHIOs39:40 Slight technical glitch, and concluding remarks

Free Healthcare IT Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use,
ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Get all the latest Health IT updates from Neil Versel for FREE!

Email Address:

We never sell or give out your contact information. We respect our readers' privacy.